Chapter 18 Avon Park, FL - B-26 Transition - One A Day in Tampa Bay

Avon Park Army Air Field was located roughly in the middle of Florida, east of Tampa. It stretched over more than 350 square miles of mostly swamp land in a county with the strange name of Okeechobee. Orange trees grew all over the area and that was quite an exotic sight to a dry corn farmer like me. No one seemed to mind if you helped yourself to an orange now and then either and I enjoyed my share. Like the water towers at Pampa and Enid airfields, the Avon Park field had its memorable building, a band stand. It was actually used for band concerts to entertain us while we were there. There was a lake on the north end of the camp and my first sight of a water moccasin there made me determined not to have to ditch anywhere in Florida.

The base had multiple uses but mostly it was for live bomb training. There were some military there for survival training and some for learning chemical warfare which was a sobering thought when we learned about it. There were also a lot of guys there training in aircraft maintenance. Not too far away as the crow flew, just outside Tampa (about 100 miles west) there was another B-26 training field, McDill Field.

We were being prepared to go overseas to fight the war in Europe and we were sent to Avon Park not only to learn how to fly the two engine B-26 (or the 4-engine B-17s)but to be trained in combat flying, bombing and gunnery skills. In other words, war games. We would be learning how to hit targets, survive, as well as how to do things like navigate by the stars. Florida is not too wide and when you took off it was only a matter of minutes, whether you headed east or west, until you were over either the Atlantic on the east or Tampa Bay on the west. This was pretty intense training with a lot of flying.

There were thousands of people on the base and very little base housing. Many of the guys, mostly officers and their families, lived off base in motels around the area. We were in very basic accommodations on the base.

The B-26 was a twin-engine bomber made by Martin. It had very high wings and they were short wings. It had large Pratt-Whitney engines with Curtis electric propellers. Since it had such a high wing loading and only two engines, if one of the engines lost power it was hard to control. The electric props had a tendency to go into flat pitch, which would cause them to over-speed and loose thrust if the power was interrupted. There was a manual override that would put them back into the right pitch again.

The large engines produced a lot of speed for a medium size bomber so take offs and landings were at speeds of 125-130 mph. Lower speeds caused it to stall on landing. I explain this because the planes had a well deserved bad reputation and it took experience and some strength to fly them.

The first week I was in transition our base lost six planes and crews just off the end of the take-off runway. Thus the B-26 had developed several rather depressing nick names. Martin Marauder was the best of them. It was also known as the Widow Maker and The Flying Coffin. There were a couple more I don’t choose to mention. The guys over at McDill were having the same problems we were and had coined the slogan “One A Day in Tampa Bay” to describe the sad situation.

I was lucky because my first flight was with the Squadron Commander and he gave me a very good briefing before we took off. Sure enough, just after take off the right prop went into flat pitch. We got it under control and had a successful flight. This training came in handy later when I was training in Ireland. Many modifications were eventually made to the plane and when all was said and done, the B-26s had the lowest losses of any combat airplane in the war. The B-26 flew over 11,000 sorties during WWII and was one of the greatest planes flown in the war.